Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Articles

Faith and Kids – the Parent’s role

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Deut. 6:1   These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess,  2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.  3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.

Deut. 6:4    Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

We can’t pass something onto our kids that we don’t have ourselves. After all, the above passage says that we need to love the lord our God with all OUR heart, OUR soul, and with all OUR strength…this is before he even mentions impressing it on your child. So what’s first? What should our priority be?

If we want to be great parents and see our children grow up to know, love, and serve Jesus, then we need to be doing that first. 

Attending a weekend service, participating in a group, and meeting with others in your group on a casual basis are all designed to be reinforcements for the way we raise our children and draw closer to God…they aren’t intended to be replacements for us raising our kids up in the faith and us taking personal responsibility for our spiritual lives.

Grab a pencil.

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Using Mind Maps to Research and Write

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How do you organize your thoughts when you are writing a proposal? Or a paper? Or a research project?

I used to gather all my information in a normal word document, or a note in Evernote and have everything in a linear fashion using 1. a) b) c) , etc, but when it came time to write, I found it was too difficult to organize everything and write efficiently.

I’ve been experimenting with mind maps for a while now, and when writing a paper for one of my classes, I decided to use it to organize my thoughts.

Here is an image of the mind map I used to gather research and organize my thoughts when I wrote my paper entitled, “Planting Multiplying Spirit-Empowered Churches.”

What do you use to organize your thoughts and present them?

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the best program that I’ve discovered for mac is “Mind Node.” I have the free version on my mac, and the paid version on my ipad.

 

Book Review: The Next Christendom – Philip Jenkins

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The following is an analytical book review of Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom.

Philip Jenkins, the author of 24 books, and 120 book chapters and refereed articles, has been on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University since 1980, and in 2007, he was appointed as the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Religious Studies. He completed his undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral work all at the University of Cambridge, but it is not his work in global Christianity that got him on the faculty of Penn State. He began as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in 1980. In fact, his early work consists of history, criminology, and pedophilia. It was not until his publication of The Next Christendom that his reputation as an expert on global Christianity came to the forefront. Since then, he has spoken widely around this topic of global Christianity (http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jpj1/vita.htm).

The thesis of this book is that the center of Christianity has shifted southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Location 36). As a result, in spite of the seeming decline of Christianity in the western world, Christianity is actually growing and flourishing in most areas around the world (Location 992).

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Book Review: The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission – Lesslie Newbigin

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The following is an analytical review on Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission Revised Edition.

Leslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was a theological missiologist/missionary and a missiological theologian. There are over six decades worth of his writings on mission theology and practice. Thus, he is considered to have had one of the greatest influences on the theology of mission in the twentieth century. Furthermore, Newbigin was a scholar practitioner since his works were always rooted in his living relationship with Jesus Christ; after all, he modeled what he wrote. He was also a Western missionary to India from 1936-1974, and upon returning to Great Britain, his missionary focus turned to the West (Shenk 1998).

The thesis of this book is that Christian mission is an open secret. It is open in the sense that the gospel is proclaimed to all without any boundaries, but it is a secret in that “it is manifest only to the eyes of faith” (Location 2556). As a result, mission cannot be relegated as a side task of the church, but it is the central calling and purpose of the church, yet the church does not own the mission, the mission is God’s (Location 256). Newbigin’s prophetic call to the church is for it to reemphasize its missionary character “to bring all things to their true end in the glory of the triune God” (Location 2556).

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A Prayer for My Girls

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What a great music video by one of my favorite bands. It gives me the conviction to continue to pray for my daughters and direct them to the one that they truly need for their entire life. I am reminded by the fact that my role as a Father is going to show them most tangibly how much God loves them and cares for them. What a big role. What a big responsibility. I can only do this through God’s strength, his power, his grace, and the Spirit’s empowerment.

Victoria and Adelyn – I’ll always strive to be there for you and I’ll always point you to the One you truly need – Jesus Christ.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

Hey, hey, sweet daugther
I am so proud to be your father
Each day’s like a gift from God.

Hey hey sweet daughter
There’s no music like your laughter
And your smile is like a rising sun.

You know I love you from the start
So come in close take my hand
Daddy shares his heart.

I wish that I could be your everything
Be the one who give you all the things you need
Sometimes I am gonna let you down
But there is a way if you just believe
Be you here like was all you been for me
Daughter Jesus is the one you need.

No matter what you walk through
He will always love you
Just the way you are.

for there’s nothing in this world
There all for my baby girl
Until be happy ever after.

The history at your life still untold
I pray the King of all the universe, will make your heart His home.

(Chorus)

Who will never leave spending it all alone
All in your where you came fight to Lord.

Book Review: The Mission of God – Christopher Wright

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This is an analytical book review of Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative.

Rev. Dr. Christopher Wright’s passion is bringing life to the “relevance of the Old Testament to Christian mission and ethics.” In addition to his current role as the Director over Langham Partnership International after John Stott’s death, he has experience as a High School teacher, theological professor, and as an ordained minister with the Anglican Church of England.

The Mission of God is a magnum opus describing the mission of God. In other words, the thesis of this book is not only that Christian mission is firmly grounded in Scripture, but also that Scripture is most accurately read through a hermeneutical framework that is centered on the mission of God (26). In other words, “God’s mission is what fills the gap between the scattering of the nations in Genesis 11 and the healing of the nations in Revelation 22” (455).

Wright navigates readers through his comprehensive study of the mission of God by dividing his book into four parts: The Bible and Mission, The God of Mission, The People of Mission, and The Arena of Mission. In the first part, Wright describes what a missiological hermeneutic of the Bible entails. He argues that individuals need to understand the Bible’s grand metanarrative, and also that the proper way to read the Bible is messianically and missionally (31). In the second part, Wright unpacks the identity, uniqueness, and universality of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ and the ensuing implications for mission (27). He finishes the section by paying attention to the opposition of the mission of God – idols and gods. In the third part, one discovers that the primary agent of the mission of God is the people of God. This is noticeable by examining the biblical covenants and the narrative of Scripture. Wright finishes his magnum opus by concentrating on the Arena of Mission – the earth, humans, and all culture and nations.

There have only been a few books that I have read and come away with a sense of awe, humility, and a passion to reread it and act on what I have read – The Mission of God is the most recent.

What kind of me does God wants for his mission?

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Making Idols

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From Judy Baxter

We all tend to make idols. So to prevent ourselves from doing so, it’s important to understand from what we are manufacturing our idols from.

  • Things that entice us
  • Things we fear
  • Things that we trust
  • Things we need

Whenever we make idols from these things, we are basically rejecting God.

“The only antidote to such idolatries, and therefore the task of biblical mission, is to lead people back to acknowledge the only true and living God in all of these domains.”

– Christopher Wright, The Mission of God

 

Spiritual Warfare and Mission

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“Our missional motivation, therefore, needs to be carefully examined. Spiritual warfare is not a matter of triumphalism pervaded by a horrid spirit of gloating superiority, in which we become obsessed with “winning a victory.” Rather it is a matter of deep compassion for those oppressed by the forces of evil and idolatry – with all their attendant social, economic, political, spiritual and personal effects. We battle with idolatry because, like the God whose mission we thereby share, we know that in doing so we seek the best interests of those we are called to serve in his name. We combat idolatry not only to glorify God but also to bless humanity. Spiritual warfare, like all forms of biblical mission, is to be motivated by and exercised with profound love, humility and compassion – as modelled in Jesus himself.”

– Christopher Wright, The Mission of God

What does success look like in ministry?

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Photo from (c) eye4deep

“When pastors don’t have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success—models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture. They begin to think their job is managing a set of ministry activities and success is about getting more people to engage those activities. Pastors, and those they lead, need to be set free from that belief.”

– Dallas Willard

Click here for the Christianity Today article.